"A personal favorite of mine, dorohedoro is among my favorite anime, and one made in a way that does the plot and its world justice."
- Bryson Saunders-Beckles, Grade 10
During my time in quarantine, I was scrolling through YouTube anime intros, as I sometimes do when I look for new anime to watch (Despite the fact that I already had a list in mind) and I happened to stumble upon Dorohedoro’s. The thumbnail was a blonde lady yelling with a smile with multi-colored tints on the screen, and so I decided to watch it, and it was a little strange. A pet pig with a devil’s tail and a face like a stuffed animal was chasing a bug with sneakers on a kitchen counter, and that wasn’t even the weirdest part. It got me excited for what will happen next, so I looked on the internet to find the anime. It did not disappoint me in its contents: It had creativity, comedy and heart, and it most definitely had guts. So without further ado, this is my review on Dorohedoro.
Our world takes place in a city by name only called The Hole. It’s miserable for everyone involved because wizards occasionally come down there to test their magic on regular human beings or just kill them for fun. Some people are standing up to them, if not for their own reasons. Enter Kaimen (Or Caiman, depending on the subtitles, translation, etc), our protagonist who has a strange immunity to magic who wants to know why he lost his memories and has a lizard head. To recover his memories, he has a man inside his mouth that he will use to talk to people to see if they are “The One” or the person who changed Kaimen’s head into a lizard and made him lose his memories. If not, they die. If they were, they die. Then there’s his best friend Nikaido, the owner of the Hungry Bug restaurant and the maker of his favorite food, Gyoza. The duo is being hunted down by Shin and Noi, two cleaners working for Noi’s cousin En, who has the ability to turn literally anything into mushrooms. Working for En is Fujita, whose partner was literally cut to ribbons by Kaimen and Ebisu, who appears to have developmental disabilities after coming back from injuries also given to her by the Protagonist.
The conflict of the story is Kaimen’s attempt to learn more about himself and who gave him his lizard head, Nikaido hiding a secret of her own, Shin and Noi trying to find and kill them, En working on something from behind the scenes, and Fujita and Ebisu just kind of tag along for the ride. That’s the conflict of the story. The tone of the story is dark and grim. The show itself is obscenely violent and raunchy sometimes, but it also had a surprising amount of comedy and light-hearted moments to convey that the characters are not all complete monsters and actually have qualities of humanity that make them more down-to-earth then the magical setting would suggest.
On top of that, the show can get really bizarre and downright absurd with moments like screaming severed heads, toilets that shoot out hellfire, Rain zombies (Kind of), and a game of Baseball involving a hole around a base that is infinity deep, just to name a few without spoiling too much. Overall, this is a show I got into for fun, and during the early stages of quarantine, I needed that. So although things have gotten better, I would recommend this show if you want a fun ride. Just prepare for the gore.
Our world takes place in a city by name only called The Hole. It’s miserable for everyone involved because wizards occasionally come down there to test their magic on regular human beings or just kill them for fun. Some people are standing up to them, if not for their own reasons. Enter Kaimen (Or Caiman, depending on the subtitles, translation, etc), our protagonist who has a strange immunity to magic who wants to know why he lost his memories and has a lizard head. To recover his memories, he has a man inside his mouth that he will use to talk to people to see if they are “The One” or the person who changed Kaimen’s head into a lizard and made him lose his memories. If not, they die. If they were, they die. Then there’s his best friend Nikaido, the owner of the Hungry Bug restaurant and the maker of his favorite food, Gyoza. The duo is being hunted down by Shin and Noi, two cleaners working for Noi’s cousin En, who has the ability to turn literally anything into mushrooms. Working for En is Fujita, whose partner was literally cut to ribbons by Kaimen and Ebisu, who appears to have developmental disabilities after coming back from injuries also given to her by the Protagonist.
The conflict of the story is Kaimen’s attempt to learn more about himself and who gave him his lizard head, Nikaido hiding a secret of her own, Shin and Noi trying to find and kill them, En working on something from behind the scenes, and Fujita and Ebisu just kind of tag along for the ride. That’s the conflict of the story. The tone of the story is dark and grim. The show itself is obscenely violent and raunchy sometimes, but it also had a surprising amount of comedy and light-hearted moments to convey that the characters are not all complete monsters and actually have qualities of humanity that make them more down-to-earth then the magical setting would suggest.
On top of that, the show can get really bizarre and downright absurd with moments like screaming severed heads, toilets that shoot out hellfire, Rain zombies (Kind of), and a game of Baseball involving a hole around a base that is infinity deep, just to name a few without spoiling too much. Overall, this is a show I got into for fun, and during the early stages of quarantine, I needed that. So although things have gotten better, I would recommend this show if you want a fun ride. Just prepare for the gore.
